“The Hague has no authority.”
A bunch of elitists telling the world what to do. Their mouths are writing checks their butts can’t cash.
But 0bama will get us sucked into it before Christmas, and it will cost American lives and money.
Not exactly, a treaty established the Permanent Court of Arbitration. If you signed the treaty, you agreed to be bound by its decisions. China did, so they normally would accept their judgement.
The Chicoms agreed to arbitration, if they renege then things get dangerous.
Since WWII we have had very few overt interstate wars. The Falklands, the Arab-Israeli Wars, and the Indo-Pakistani Wars come to mind, all of which were limited in scope or geography.
Most other major wars have either a thin veneer of "civil war" (Korea, Vietnam, multiple African Wars) and/or a thin veneer of international approval (Korea, Persian Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan 2000s), or are legitimate internal conflicts.
If China effectively tells the court, and the world at large, to go pound sand they set themselves on a potential collision course against Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan. As well as two longstanding major U.S. interests: freedom of navigation (1/3 of global shipping) and the independence of the Philippines. (Obama thought he could appease the Chinese, but they see him as weak, so they keep ramping up the pressure.)
What keeps bothering me is why? and why now? China is a land animal, they are investing in both a blue water navy and an expensive and aggressive campaign to seize the South China Sea. This risks a general war in eastern Asia.
My fear is that the Chicoms think the alternative is worse. There are intense social, economic and political pressures at play in China. But as a mostly closed society, we cant see how they are interacting. My fear is that the Chicoms are turning to external expansion to vent internal pressures. China has spent most of the last three hundred years in a semi-constant state of civil war (the last being the Cultural Revolution, which was a weird, but IMHO a real civil war.) I admit this is speculation, but Obama's weakness has provided this opportunity to China.
So what’s the alternative? Should America claim the entire Atlantic and Pacific?